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"Tales of the Monocacee" |
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"Hermes" Hermes stopped. He looked around. There were glassed shop-fronts, one after another, to either direction, as far as he could see. They had apartments above them, even apartments above them. The walkway beneath his feet was solid, like a long flat rock. There were cars, with no visible source of power, some utilizing that invisible power, others dead and left beside the walkway. The other side of the street was a copy of this side--apartments over glass walled storefronts, a flat stone walkway. "Cool," he said. "Time must have passed. Where's the party?" He caught his reflection in a glass wall. "Cool," he said again as he perused the tall and angular figure in the mirror-like surface. The spiked hair was bright yellow when it left his head, tapering to orange and topped with intense bright purple at each spike's tip. A golden ring going through one earlobe was complemented by one slightly smaller in the opposing nostril. The black leather jacket, sculpted to his body, was studded with so much silver he was surprised it didn't weigh him down. His black leather chaps stopped at the crotch to reveal deep blue jeans. "Cool," he said again, smiling at his image. Another question came to mind -"Where is where I am?," and he looked at the intersection. There were signs on poles around it, and one pole had long skinny ones that said 'Market Street' and 'Church Street'. "Cool," he said, in that continuing tone of happy wonder. "Not much time. I wonder which way my church is." He looked at the people. They were gray. The females, for some reason, sported colors on their coverings, but the brightness and variety only accentuated the drabness underneath. There was a paucity of pleasure, a humorlessness that made him wonder if human beings still retained all their senses --if they especially had lost that sense of pleasure that had made them so Godlike and had attracted him to them in the first place. There was a clock in a church tower ("I wonder if that's my church" he thought,) that said 4:00. "Maybe that's what's wrong," he said, "it's too early." Suddenly the little hand was on the seven, the shadows were longer, and the people were a little less gray. "Cool," he said, "but not very cool. We need more people. And they need to be more cool." Nel-Lee picked up the phone. She was so cool she didn't think she was cool at all. She only did what she wanted to do and dressed how she wanted to dress and figured those other people wanted to be gray. There was a rainbow running across her brain that the grayness couldn't reach and that reflected iridescently in the basic black she habitually wore. The phone was for her. It almost always was when she picked it up. Her boyfriend Jack started talking. "I thought my homework was gonna take three hours but it almost did itself and they can't stop me from going out. Wanna go downtown?" Her homework was done. What she couldn't finish in school while her classmates were struggling, she got through on the bus ride home each day, so her evenings were almost always free. "Yeah," she said, "we'd better go. I have a feeling downtown's gonna be a cool place tonight." She owned a car, an ancient convertible that her dad had taught her to fix, but she was too young to drive, so Jack drove it over to pick her up. Being east of the town, they watched the mountain sunset as they drove in. Hermes was ecstatic. More and more people were answering his subliminal call, and less and less of them were gray. When they complained of thirst all the bars began selling homemade root beer. When the sidewalks got crowded they grew wider and the shops sprouted tables outside. Art students were selling pastel portraits and musicians began collecting change in instrument cases sprawled at their feet as they played. Nel-Lee and Jack walked up Market Street. She was amazed. The air itself sparkled like a hotrod paint job, and the lights all looked like they were behind a star filter. She could see the intensity of the air increasing as they walked, and she headed straight for the source. Hermes felt a tug at his elbow. He looked at the young girl whose dark brown eyes penetrated deeply and directly into his. Her shoulder length hair was a deep magenta. Her black blouse, held on and held together with a plethora of small safety pins, covered the top of a long silky skirt that itself covered the tops of her steel-toed boots. The sides of the heels and toes were the same color as her hair. "You're too cool" he said, looking in her eyes again. "No one else can even see me, yet I'm flesh and blood to your touch. Do you know who I am?" "You're Hermes. I don't know how I know it, or why you're here, but you must've done all this, and for that I have to thank you. And you're way cooler than me. I'm stupid and ugly, and you're lighting up heaven and earth." Hermes looked at her and grinned. "Oh I love it when I meet somebody so cool they can't imagine they are. You're close as me to me and yet you see a little waif, a match girl, a stupid and ugly, and at the same time you see clearly." He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and gave her a hug that made her think of her daddy, then swooped into a bow and gestured to the nearest bistro. "Root beer, my dear, and perhaps a bowl of pasta?" The crowd spread apart unconsciously as the three of them seemingly floated just above the surface to a sidewalk table where someone stood ready to take their order. The root beer was exquisite, with that flavor that can't survive bottling, the pasta was perfectly al dente, the fries boardwalk and plentiful. "Is this permanent?" She was looking at Hermes as she spoke, and including him in the question, but was alluding to the milieu. Hermes grinned. "Sure," he said, "if you like it." Her nose wrinkled. "Too many cars." Now there was a trolley track up the middle of the street. Automobile traffic was cut by 90%, and people began using the street as an extension of the sidewalk. The expansiveness suited everyone. She turned to Hermes to compliment him on his work and saw Atlas standing by his elbow. "She may be tres cool, Herm, but will you look at what you've done?" Atlas said. "Calm down, Atlas, anything can be fixed. What's your problem?" "Look at this." Atlas said as the two of them were floating over the city. "You've put streetcars coming up Market Street, and you've stopped the cars, but you've got no place for the trolleys to go, and, for that matter, the cars you've shunted off. If you want permanence, you've got to have function." Hermes was doubled over in laughter by the time Atlas finished. It took him a minute to stop, straighten up, and wipe his eyes, and then he turned to Atlas. "You're right," he said, still chuckling, "you're right, and I can go ahead and fix it, but you've got an idea, don't you? You've got an idea of your own, and you just don't wanna interfere." He laughed and jumped, reaching out to poke Atlas in the ribs. "You've got a plan, an' you're itching to tell me all about it, aren't you?" Atlas shrugged. [sorry. Ed.] "You know me, Herm. I got a plan for everything. But look at this layout. It's sweet. "They've got three major North/South streets, and six suburban destinations with a lot of parking. For downtown you put in a double loop with a set of trolleys going down the West side street and up the center, and a set going up the East side and down the center. Then throw in three sets to and from the suburban destinations through the center, and the best form of independent mobility will become the trolley, and the pretty picture we have from this table (they were back) will be a reality." Nel-Lee was continuing to speak. "Atlas," she said, in a surprised tone, the compliment she had started to give to Hermes gone, surprised she recognized him, surprised because he looked exactly as she would have expected, and surprised because she was glad to see him. The compliment was still in her throat though, and she said "look at this cool street. Hermes made it." "Nel-Lee," Atlas said as he reached across the table, clasped her right hand in both of his and gave it a light squeeze. "You have no idea how glad I am to meet you. I love your street. I hope you enjoy your transportation system. Hermes," he said, turning to his fellow Olympian, "what a delightful party." He squeezed into a chair on Hermes' left. "What're we drinking here--still rotgut, or have they gotten a little saner?" Hermes laughed again. "These guys are, anyway. This is el primo, made in the basement, never bottled draft root beer. It's highly recommended. And highly delicious." "Two root beers," Atlas said to the server at his elbow. She placed them in front of him and disappeared. Atlas quaffed half of one mug in a single motion, and, turning to Hermes, said "right you are, Johnnyboy, good beer, even great beer, and no befuddlement." Nel-Lee turned to Jack. "I wonder what's going on in the park?" Hermes had them there in a flash. The rec center was ablaze in lights, there was a concert at the pavilion, and vendors everywhere selling nibbles, trinkets and crafts from the sides of wheeled carts. People of all ages and every form of dress strolled or grouped here and there in small clumps. An occasional unarmed but uniformed policeman strolled by, smiling and nodding but sending a sense of order through their presence. Hermes had disappeared. Nel-Lee and Jack were ecstatically unaware. They strolled amongst the booths and entertainers, throwing coins into a juggler's hat, stopping and sitting at a Punch and Judy show, laughing when she whacked him with a broom, running into friends and schoolmates all amazed at homework that had done itself, until they were saturated with pleasure. The top was down. The sky above was black velvet studded with diamonds. Nel-Lees head was thrown back and she, securely belted in, was contemplating eternity. Jack, watching the headlights cut a tunnel through the country road, broke the silence. "That was an incredible night. I don't think I've ever enjoyed myself so much. But one thing confuses me. Sometimes, when I wasn't looking at you, out of the corner of my eye I seemed to see you in conversation with some sort of shimmer. But when I looked you weren't talking to anyone." "I'm sorry. I'd just assumed you saw everything I did. But he did say he was invisible. That shimmer was Hermes, the Greek god of transportation and guidance, who's also a partying fool if tonight's any indication. He transformed our town into a reppository of pleasure, and gave everybody the time to enjoy it." Her voice grew a little wistful. "I wish I didn't have to deal with time. You know, he's like free energy, passing back and forth through time without a wrinkle. I'd swear I opened my mouth once to say something to him and in less than a flick of an eyelid he went somewhere with Atlas and did something and was back. But in terms of time it didn't happen." "How come you saw all that and I didn't?" "I don't know Jack. When we studied mythology in the third grade I really loved it. Maybe I developed an affinity." The little convertible pulled into her driveway. She got out, then leaned back in to kiss him. "Good night Jack. I hope Hermes gave us enough time for a good night's sleep." :::::::::::: © John C. Hagerhorst |
